If you visit The Orthosphere fairly regularly, as I do, then you have surely noticed the "Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists" quote beneath the site's title.
The quote comes from Joseph de Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher who railed against the French Revolution and its rationalist rejection of Christianity in favor of the traditional social and religious hierarchies the Revolution sought to replace. Simply put, Joseph de Maistre was a reactionary; when it came to matters of civilization, he argued for the tried and true model of a civilization ordered around Christian supremacy and its contingent external institutions and hierarchies.
The placement of de Maistre's "wherever an altar is found" quote on The Orthosphere site serves as somewhat of a declaration of the perspectives, attitudes, and viewpoints of the site's writers, most of whom identify as reactionaries of some stripe or other.
Like de Maistre, Orthosphere writers heavily emphasize the social, cultural, and political aspects of Christianity and, quite rightly argue that society, culture, and politics in the West all tend to go to hell once Christianity is taken out of the equation.
Remove the altar and you remove civilization. In this sense, sites like The Orthosphere continue the de Maistre reactionary impetus to steer civilization back toward a model based on God and Creation, and in this impetus, they have my complete sympathy for the simple reason that any civilization not based on religion will inevitably collapse and cease to exist. At the same time, I do not believe that our civilization can be saved. Moreover, I increasingly sense that our civilization will probably have to collapse for Christianity to flourish once again.
Though I respect and support the utter necessity of basing civilization on religion, I am wary of the motivation behind the restoration of the traditional Christian civilizational model lauded by reactionaries like de Maistre. To begin with, I do not believe such a restoration is even possible today. The time chasm and gaping cultural abyss separating contemporary reactionaries from their eighteenth-century role models are far too great to bridge.
The traditional altar-civilization infrastructure still existed in some cohesive form – both externally in the world and internally in the minds and hearts of men – when de Maistre and his contemporaries worked to restore it, but the same cannot be said of today.
Our modern world marks the terminus of the traditional altar-civilization model. Civilization abandoned the altar, and the altar eventually abandoned civilization. In our time and place, altar and civilization are merged into an anti-civilizational force that is explicitly opposed to God and Creation. Thus, de Maistre’s dictum regarding altars and civilizations no longer rings true, at least not in the conventional sense.
Having said that, I continue to have the deepest respect for sites like The Orthosphere for one simple reason – they understand that civilization – in the proper sense of the term – can only exist if it is based on and motivated by religion.
At the same time, I find the casual dismissal or downgrading of consciousness development espoused by many of the writers at sites like The Orthosphere troubling. Such writers and thinkers support the view that civilization has taken a step – or several steps – in the wrong direction, and that the only way to right our sinking civilizational ship is to retrace our steps to the spot where we took the wrong step and re-establish ourselves in traditional Christendom, complete with Christian social hierarchies anchored in a strong and unified Christian church that holds sway over all temporal matters.
The problem with this approach is it doesn’t fully consider the reality of consciousness development – that is, the simple fact that modern people are much different from the people who inhabited traditional Christendom. Nor does it offer any satisfactory answers to the question of why people chose to step away from the traditional altar-civilization model of consciousness. It also offers poor explanations as to why the altar eventually chose to follow civilization rather than lead it.
Another problem with the altar-civilization paradigm is it leaves reactionaries and conservatives with very little room in which to maneuver spiritually. If Christianity is primarily a cultural, social, and political force, then what becomes of Christianity if all the cultural, social, and political forces of the world – including the altars – are subverted against Christianity? Moreover, how much should individual Christians invest into “saving” or “restoring” a civilization that has willfully abandoned its altars? What exactly would a Christian be saving or restoring? And would such saving and restoration hinder or fulfill Christianity?
Times like these are a crucial test for those who adhere to the conventional altar-civilization model of Christianity, but they don’t need to be.
On the one hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can be viewed as the catastrophe of all catastrophes, a gaping gorge from which it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to emerge. On the other hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can also be viewed as the beginning of a heightened form of Christian spirituality and religiosity, one that rises to fulfill Christianity.
The reactionary model seeks to restore in order to avoid collapse, but the present suggests that the way forward lies not in reaction and restoration, but in resurrection and creation, in something resembling what Nikolai Berdyaev outlines in The Divine and The Human (bold added):
Religious discussion centers upon the possibility of new revelation and a new spiritual epoch. All other questions are secondary. The new revelation is not at all a new religion, distinct from Christianity, but rather the fulfilment and completion of the Christian revelation, bringing it to a true universality. This we do not have as yet. But we cannot simply wait for the revelation of the spirit. It depends upon man's creative activity as well. It is not to be understood as only a new revelation of God to man: it is also the revelation of man to God. This means that it will be a divine-human revelation. In the Spirit, the divisions and contradictions of the divine and the human will be overcome, while the distinction between them will be maintained. This will be the crowning of the mystical dialectic of the divine and the human.
The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence....
In the religion of the Spirit, the religion of freedom, everything will appear in a new light: there will be neither authority nor reward: the nightmare of a legalistic conception of Christianity and of eternal punishment will finally disappear. It will be founded, not upon judgment and recompense, but on creative development and transfiguration, on likeness to God.
The religion of the Spirit is the expectation that a new human and humane sociality will be revealed, radiating love and charity. It is also the expectation of the revelation of a new relationship between man and the cosmos, of cosmic transfiguration. The process of the decomposition of the cosmos ... is nearing its end. {but} least of all does this mean an optimistic concept of the destiny of history.
The discovery of light does not mean a denial of darkness. On the contrary: before the advent of the epoch of Spirit man will have to pass through deepened shadow, through the epoch of night. We are living through the tragic experience of the de-spiritualization and devastation of nature, as it were, the disappearance of the cosmos (the discoveries of physics), the de-spiritualization and devastation of history (Marx and historical materialism), the de-spiritualization and devastation of the mind (Freud and psycho-analysis).
The end of the war and revolution has disclosed terrible cruelty: humaneness is vanishing. It is as though the Creator has withdrawn from creation. He is present only incognito (a favorite expression of Kierkegaard). But all this may be understood as a dialectic moment in the revelation of the Spirit, and a new spiritual life. One must die, in order to live again. Man and the world are being crucified. But the final word will belong to the Resurrection.
Note added: This post is not a swipe at The Orthosphere or its bloggers. The gentlemen at the Orthosphere are all highly intelligent, well-meaning Christians. I support their blog and maintain cordial relations with them. As I mention above, I have a deep respect for The Orthosphere, and I believe its bloggers are all on the right side. What am I trying to do here is encourage the expansion of exploratory thinking beyond the altar-civilization model to which so many Christians seem indivisibly wed.
The quote comes from Joseph de Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher who railed against the French Revolution and its rationalist rejection of Christianity in favor of the traditional social and religious hierarchies the Revolution sought to replace. Simply put, Joseph de Maistre was a reactionary; when it came to matters of civilization, he argued for the tried and true model of a civilization ordered around Christian supremacy and its contingent external institutions and hierarchies.
The placement of de Maistre's "wherever an altar is found" quote on The Orthosphere site serves as somewhat of a declaration of the perspectives, attitudes, and viewpoints of the site's writers, most of whom identify as reactionaries of some stripe or other.
Like de Maistre, Orthosphere writers heavily emphasize the social, cultural, and political aspects of Christianity and, quite rightly argue that society, culture, and politics in the West all tend to go to hell once Christianity is taken out of the equation.
Remove the altar and you remove civilization. In this sense, sites like The Orthosphere continue the de Maistre reactionary impetus to steer civilization back toward a model based on God and Creation, and in this impetus, they have my complete sympathy for the simple reason that any civilization not based on religion will inevitably collapse and cease to exist. At the same time, I do not believe that our civilization can be saved. Moreover, I increasingly sense that our civilization will probably have to collapse for Christianity to flourish once again.
Though I respect and support the utter necessity of basing civilization on religion, I am wary of the motivation behind the restoration of the traditional Christian civilizational model lauded by reactionaries like de Maistre. To begin with, I do not believe such a restoration is even possible today. The time chasm and gaping cultural abyss separating contemporary reactionaries from their eighteenth-century role models are far too great to bridge.
The traditional altar-civilization infrastructure still existed in some cohesive form – both externally in the world and internally in the minds and hearts of men – when de Maistre and his contemporaries worked to restore it, but the same cannot be said of today.
Our modern world marks the terminus of the traditional altar-civilization model. Civilization abandoned the altar, and the altar eventually abandoned civilization. In our time and place, altar and civilization are merged into an anti-civilizational force that is explicitly opposed to God and Creation. Thus, de Maistre’s dictum regarding altars and civilizations no longer rings true, at least not in the conventional sense.
Having said that, I continue to have the deepest respect for sites like The Orthosphere for one simple reason – they understand that civilization – in the proper sense of the term – can only exist if it is based on and motivated by religion.
At the same time, I find the casual dismissal or downgrading of consciousness development espoused by many of the writers at sites like The Orthosphere troubling. Such writers and thinkers support the view that civilization has taken a step – or several steps – in the wrong direction, and that the only way to right our sinking civilizational ship is to retrace our steps to the spot where we took the wrong step and re-establish ourselves in traditional Christendom, complete with Christian social hierarchies anchored in a strong and unified Christian church that holds sway over all temporal matters.
The problem with this approach is it doesn’t fully consider the reality of consciousness development – that is, the simple fact that modern people are much different from the people who inhabited traditional Christendom. Nor does it offer any satisfactory answers to the question of why people chose to step away from the traditional altar-civilization model of consciousness. It also offers poor explanations as to why the altar eventually chose to follow civilization rather than lead it.
Another problem with the altar-civilization paradigm is it leaves reactionaries and conservatives with very little room in which to maneuver spiritually. If Christianity is primarily a cultural, social, and political force, then what becomes of Christianity if all the cultural, social, and political forces of the world – including the altars – are subverted against Christianity? Moreover, how much should individual Christians invest into “saving” or “restoring” a civilization that has willfully abandoned its altars? What exactly would a Christian be saving or restoring? And would such saving and restoration hinder or fulfill Christianity?
Times like these are a crucial test for those who adhere to the conventional altar-civilization model of Christianity, but they don’t need to be.
On the one hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can be viewed as the catastrophe of all catastrophes, a gaping gorge from which it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to emerge. On the other hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can also be viewed as the beginning of a heightened form of Christian spirituality and religiosity, one that rises to fulfill Christianity.
The reactionary model seeks to restore in order to avoid collapse, but the present suggests that the way forward lies not in reaction and restoration, but in resurrection and creation, in something resembling what Nikolai Berdyaev outlines in The Divine and The Human (bold added):
Religious discussion centers upon the possibility of new revelation and a new spiritual epoch. All other questions are secondary. The new revelation is not at all a new religion, distinct from Christianity, but rather the fulfilment and completion of the Christian revelation, bringing it to a true universality. This we do not have as yet. But we cannot simply wait for the revelation of the spirit. It depends upon man's creative activity as well. It is not to be understood as only a new revelation of God to man: it is also the revelation of man to God. This means that it will be a divine-human revelation. In the Spirit, the divisions and contradictions of the divine and the human will be overcome, while the distinction between them will be maintained. This will be the crowning of the mystical dialectic of the divine and the human.
The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence....
In the religion of the Spirit, the religion of freedom, everything will appear in a new light: there will be neither authority nor reward: the nightmare of a legalistic conception of Christianity and of eternal punishment will finally disappear. It will be founded, not upon judgment and recompense, but on creative development and transfiguration, on likeness to God.
The religion of the Spirit is the expectation that a new human and humane sociality will be revealed, radiating love and charity. It is also the expectation of the revelation of a new relationship between man and the cosmos, of cosmic transfiguration. The process of the decomposition of the cosmos ... is nearing its end. {but} least of all does this mean an optimistic concept of the destiny of history.
The discovery of light does not mean a denial of darkness. On the contrary: before the advent of the epoch of Spirit man will have to pass through deepened shadow, through the epoch of night. We are living through the tragic experience of the de-spiritualization and devastation of nature, as it were, the disappearance of the cosmos (the discoveries of physics), the de-spiritualization and devastation of history (Marx and historical materialism), the de-spiritualization and devastation of the mind (Freud and psycho-analysis).
The end of the war and revolution has disclosed terrible cruelty: humaneness is vanishing. It is as though the Creator has withdrawn from creation. He is present only incognito (a favorite expression of Kierkegaard). But all this may be understood as a dialectic moment in the revelation of the Spirit, and a new spiritual life. One must die, in order to live again. Man and the world are being crucified. But the final word will belong to the Resurrection.
Note added: This post is not a swipe at The Orthosphere or its bloggers. The gentlemen at the Orthosphere are all highly intelligent, well-meaning Christians. I support their blog and maintain cordial relations with them. As I mention above, I have a deep respect for The Orthosphere, and I believe its bloggers are all on the right side. What am I trying to do here is encourage the expansion of exploratory thinking beyond the altar-civilization model to which so many Christians seem indivisibly wed.
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